Abstract
The debate about economic growth and welfare surfaced during the recent Indian elections. One school of thought led by Jagdish Bhagwati emphasized high economic growth as the main means of ameliorating poverty, while the other spearheaded by Amartya Sen gave priority to social interventions. This book does not deal with this growth versus welfare debate, but is very much related to it.
The high level of poverty in the region and in the individual countries has necessitated social interventions to alleviate poverty over a long period of time. This book explores the various policies and mechanisms adopted by South Asian countries to mitigate poverty and improve livelihoods of significant proportions of their population. The six case studies discuss, in detail, the welfare policies pursued in South Asia, while comparative chapters attempt to find the commonalities and differences of the South Asian welfare interventions. The book provides insights that should be useful in redesigning welfare policies in the respective South Asian countries.
The essays explore the origins, motivations, mechanisms and effectiveness of welfare policies and interventions and attempts to discover a pattern of similarity in the welfare approaches of the six South Asian countries—Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The country studies are detailed studies of each country’s welfare interventions.
Although the book discusses the historical evolution of welfare policies in the six South Asian countries, its focus is primarily on policies introduced in the last decade between 2003 and 2013. The book examines the ways in which these policies came about, and what their genesis and trajectory reflects about the nature of the state and about power dynamics in each of these countries.
The Preface to the book by Naila Kabeer gives a very salient historical and political background of the region, a succinct synthesis of the fundamental issues of the book and answers some of the questions raised in the subsequent chapters. Naila Kabeer points out that four of the countries have had a similar historical origin in constitutional development, but of them Pakistan veered away from a democratic framework for much of its recent history. Nepal and the Maldives have had different political systems with Nepal having a monarchy till recently. The Maldives had an autocratic government most of the time. These political and constitutional differences have had an important bearing on the nature of welfare policies pursued in the six countries.
The book is in three parts. The first part of four chapters introduces the reader to the issues of development and welfare policies in South Asia, gives an overview of the ‘geography of welfare in South Asia’ and deals with the all-important question of fiscal space for welfare policies. These essays in Part I draw on the welfare policy experiences of the six South Asian countries and provide much thought for reflection on policy reforms. The six chapters in Part II are in-depth country studies by well-known scholars who provide a wealth of information on each country’s welfare policies. The three chapters in Part III, that concludes the book, deal with social sector spending, welfare development and rights and the outlook for welfare policies in South Asia.
Part I consists of four chapters written by three leading scholars in social policy and development, G. Köhler, D. Chopra and A. Bonnerjee. Their conceptual analysis attempts to find similarities and lessons from the experiences of welfare policies in the six South Asian countries and seeks to establish whether a South-Asian type of developmental welfare state is emerging in welfare interventions. Is there what Gabriele Köehler calls a South-Asian ‘geography of welfare states’? The country experiences to develop a conceptual model of South Asian welfare policies provide little evidence of such a common approach.
The introductory first chapter by Gabriele Köehler underscores the salient issues with respect to the nexus between welfare policies and development. In Chapter 2, Gabriele Köehler provides an overview of the history of public policy in the region and the welfare state developments during the last decade. The central question the author addresses is whether the South Asian region has a ‘common developmental welfare state identity’ that is different from welfare states in other regions.
The limits imposed by each country’s fiscal situation compared with the enormity of the poverty problem and social welfare needs has been the central question to resolve. Inadequate public finances have been a serious constraint to sufficient welfare measures. In Chapter 3, Aniruddha Bonnerjee analyzes this issue of fiscal space in the region and concludes that overall public revenue in the region has been an inadequate 11 to 12 per cent of GDP and has been stagnant during the last two decades when it has ‘merely kept pace with GDP growth’. Allocations to finance social expenditure within the rather limited public resources are substantial in some cases. She suggests that welfare expenditure could be increased by reallocating other expenditure, such as excessive military spending. In addition, she stresses the need to increase revenues by additional and higher taxes to finance higher welfare expenditures.
The implication of this analysis is that each state should explore concrete ways and means of increasing tax revenues on the one hand, and reset priorities to enable additional expenditure to priority welfare needs. It is also important that the limited resources should be targeted more effectively so that the needy are the real beneficiaries. The problem of effective targeting of welfare policies remains a serious problem in South Asian countries.
Part II deals with six country studies that examine the welfare policies pursued by the six South Asian countries. They bring out significant differences in their quest to tackle poverty and income inequality. The welfare policies pursued to achieve this objective include education and health policies; large-scale public works schemes designed to tackle rural unemployment and poverty and policies aimed at improving gender equality and social exclusion of disadvantaged caste or ethnic communities. The policies range from universal subsidies to those targeted to the poorer sections of the population.
These detailed well-researched studies of social policy development in the individual countries of the region are informative and enlightening. They portray interesting examples of new social protection policies such as in Pakistan where an income benefit for women is given, while in the Maldives welfare innovations are in housing and transport. Interventions in Nepal confer a new child benefit.
Deepta Chopra’s Chapter, ‘The Indian Case: Towards a Rights Based Welfare State’, discusses India’s wide range of policies to deal with education, health, the needs of ethnic minorities and informal sector workers. Especially interesting is the self-targeting employment guarantee schemes for the rural unemployed (the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act—MGNREGA). Laksiri Jayasuriya’s well-documented chapter brings out the motivations and constitutional basis of welfare policies in Sri Lanka from colonial days till the post-colonial and liberal economic policies. It shows that the welfare state regressed in Sri Lanka after the introduction of neo-liberal economic policies in 1977. However, the country’s social indicators have improved and the Human Development Index (HDI) and social protection index are the best in South Asia. The implications of Jayasuriya’s account is that Sri Lanka has achieved her high HDI ranking owing to the legacy of welfare measures rather than recent policies that have cut down welfare expenditure.
The three chapters in Part III deal with social-sector spending, welfare development and rights and the outlook for welfare policies in South Asia, and comes back to the fundamental issue of whether there is a unique type of South-Asian welfare state. Aniruddha Bonnerjee’s analysis of the structure of social expenditure finds a rather ‘mixed bag’ of trends and levels of expenditure that do not support the view that there is a clear and sustained commitment to substantial increases of social expenditure in South Asia.
Deepta Chopra answers Köehler’s basic question on whether there is a unique South-Asian geography of developmental welfare states somewhat inconclusively, that ‘it is hard to say’ but she sees the South-Asian countries on a ‘journey in which notion of welfare, development and rights are being upheld…’. In my view, the variety of social welfare policies in the countries discussed in Part II makes such a conceptualization somewhat far-fetched and not of much use, perhaps even a distraction from salient issues, in understanding the dynamics of social welfare policies in the region.
The book provides a useful in-depth analysis of the nature of welfare policies in six South Asian countries. It discloses similarities and differences in policy approaches amongst them and traces the political dynamics underpinning them. These essays use the country experiences to develop a conceptual model of South Asian welfare policies. It explores the thesis of whether there is a particular type of ‘development welfare state’ that can be observed across South Asia.
However, the variety of social welfare policies in the countries discussed in Part II makes such a conceptualization somewhat far-fetched. The search for a similarity of welfare policies was therefore not a plausible hypothesis.
The analysis of the fiscal space available in each of the six countries is informative. It provided a basis for considering the financial feasibility of a ‘developmental welfare state’ model in the region. One of the most useful contributions of the book is the detailed analysis of tax revenue patterns and fiscal expenditures as they have evolved over the past decade. This analysis provides insights into the fiscal space available in each of the six countries for social policies, drawing conclusions about the feasibility of these policies.
This comprehensive book is a timely contribution to policy analysts and policy makers in South Asia in designing effective welfare interventions. It explores critical aspects of policy debates on a possible move from welfare to ‘rights’. It provides researchers experience in social policy to design innovative welfare programmes for South Asian countries.
No doubt economic growth is vital to provide the fiscal space for adequate welfare expenditure, but the design and targeting of these is equally vital for the efficacy of those measures.